Subject: Re: [isdf] Re: www.internetforce.org

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 16:40:34 +0200

Folks,

I wrote up a draft, http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-loughney-what-standards-00.txt which discusses similar issues. I'd appreciate comments, as I intend on updating the document soon.

Thanks,
John
-- original message --
Subject:	Re: [isdf] Re: www.internetforce.org
From:	"jfcm" <[email-masked]>
Date:		8th January 2004 11:32:43 pm

At 21:45 08/01/04, John C Klensin wrote:
>A better answer would have been "the term 'request for comment' is 
>historical, dating from a time when the preferred way to make a formal 
>comment on a document involved writing another document, which then was 
>numbered into the series".  That mechanism is still available, although 
>usually very slow.  But documents that become RFCs are now first posted as 
>Internet Drafts (see http://www.ietf.org/ID); comments on those are both 
>solicited and, usually, handled very quickly.
>
>Today, the RFC Series, despite retention of the original name and 
>numbering series, acts as a permanent, archival, repository of 
>information, decisions taken, and standards published.  As such, documents 
>in the series are subjected to review and editing processes (which differ 
>somewhat depending on the type of document and are appropriate for 
>conventional references from conventional documents.  Running 
>conversations, logs of comments, etc., are not well suited for that 
>archival and reference role, regardless of their other advantages and 
>disadvantages.

Could it not be useful to have a "List of Comments" (LOC) for each RFC? 
Where experience about the RFC reading, testing and implementation could be 
listed by the authors (or a successor) from experience and questions 
received. It would avoid the same questions to be debated again and again 
and it would help further thinking. These comments could start with a 
summary of the WG debated issues, explaining the whys of some options. I 
suppose the implementation would be easy enough since it would follow the 
same numbering scheme and titles. Such a LOC being an updated appendix 
could be reviewed and help preparing replacements.
jfc